Christmas Club

I haven't been playing along. Time and I haven't quite made a truce yet. But today I felt the pull, the urge, the calling... to come out to play... to wax nostalgic... to join in...

At Christmas We... used to go to Elmira every year. The girls would have Christmas at Grandma's house.  They would all dress up in matching Christmas outfits and see Santa (a.k.a. Uncle Frankie... who, by the way, still plays Santa to this day).

 Our last real Christmas at Grandma's house was in 1996.  In 1997 she was already sick and confined to a bed. In 1998 we had our first Christmas at home, just the five of us.

At Christmas We... used to put up the Christmas Tree in the basement. And the girls used to hang all the ornaments. My job was simply opening them up and passing them out.

 Now the Christmas tree is put up in the family room. Same Christmas tree though! Now I hang all the ornaments. They aren't interested any more.  They want it done. They just don't want to do it.

At Christmas They.... used to love each other... pretty much unconditionally.

 Now, one of them is choosing not to speak to another one of them. Perceived hurts and injustices combined with a little unwillingness to forgive makes for a bit of tension in the air.

At Christmas We... used to hang the stockings along the bannister.

 Now we hang them above the fireplace. Same stockings though!

At Christmas They... used to wake up ridiculously early and wait at the top of the stairs for the all clear to come down.

 Now they wake up later and aren't in any rush to see what Santa brought.

At Christmas She... used to get excited about simple little things like slipper socks...

At Christmas We... gather in the family room, around the tree, and open stockings first... then presents. We eat a turkey dinner, watch the parade on television, and eventually go out to see a first run movie. Some things have changed over the years.  Some things have stayed the same.  I haven't caught a decent Christmas photo of my girls in years... hopefully this will be the year to remedy that.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas. Enjoy your family, enjoy your traditions... whatever they are!

Life Tunes 6

This is the last installment of the Life Tunes meme.  The suggested theme is your favorite Christmas or Holiday song.  Your own favorite may be anywhere in the range from Christmas hymns like "Silent Night" or "Away in a Manger" to secular pop titles like "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" or "Frosty The Snowman".  There are so many choices!

Here is my layout:

The layout was created using Krystal Hartley's newest kit "Joyeux Noel"

Now it's YOUR turn to share your favorite Christmas/Holiday tune!  Choose a song that speaks to you, has a special meaning in your family, or just gives you the warm fuzzies during this season. You can create a layout, write a blog post, or share a link to a YouTube video. The linky will remain open until the end of the month, so you have plenty of time to join in!

Coming Soon - Life Tunes 6!

This final installment of my little mini series known as "Life Tunes" is late, but still hopefully very timely for you all!

My suggested topic for our last installment is your favorite Christmas/Holiday song. Your own favorite may be anywhere in the range from Christmas hymns like "Silent Night" or "Away in a Manger" to secular pop titles like "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" or "Frosty The Snowman".  There are so many choices!

So pick a song that speaks to you, has a special meaning in your family, or just gives you the warm fuzzies during this season. Then create a layout or a blog post to document your choice. Come back on Friday, December 5th, when I'll be here posting my layout about this song:

Doing It Digi

I couldn't make up my mind about this year's JYC/December Daily album.  Even though I deeply admire what Ali Edwards does with her December Daily, I learned last year that I have neither the patience, nor the time, to collect and assemble "stuff" into an album. I'm not much of a collector of daily ephemera anyway.

I knew that to be doable this year, my album needed to be mostly digital.  And this year I really want to focus on the photography aspect and get some great new photos.  I know that my decorations and the scenery around here do not change much from year to year. I just know in my heart that I can do a better job photographing them.

So I spent a couple of days organizing and purging my Christmas themed digi stash.  It is truly sad how much digi stuff I own.  In fact, after extensive purging of items I know I won't use, just the Christmas themed folder is 4 GB!  Yet, after all that organizing and purging, there was nothing in my stash that was inspiring me.  So what did I do?  Went shopping of course!

I bought Ali's 2011 templates (currently on sale over at Designer Digitals).  I used the same 2010 templates and decided this year to just finish out that album which definitely has enough space for another year.  I had to go through and resize all the templates to 5.5 by 8.5 to fit my album.  Although tedious, it is really simple.

I also bought Frosty Nocturne.  Miki Ferkul is one of my favorite designers over at Scrapbookgraphics and this kit is currently 20% off (because it is new this week).  I love that while it contains totally traditional red/green/cream Christmas colors it also adds in the blue and brown and has non-traditional elements.  I can borrow from other kits if I need to add a santa or christmas tree to something, but I'll mainly be working from this kit to limit my options and keep the whole project streamlined.

To make sure that I was fully committed to my choice, I went through the process of creating 31 days of digi page backgrounds.  These are now in my 2011 file, just waiting for photos and finishing touches! I used the same paper from the Frosty Nocturne kit for all the backgrounds. It will be mostly covered up with photos and additional elements anyway and it gives me a nice neutral base to start.

The interesting thing about working with Ali's template is that the space for the photo actually measures about 5 by 6.5".  Not a traditional size by any means.  Last year I either cropped a vertical photo to fit or added in two horizontal photos or one horizontal photo and some journaling.  I'm kind of curious to see how I will handle that space this year.  Who knows!

So there you have it - decisions made and the process begun. And I'm feeling a definite sense of calm knowing I have made it this far.  How about you?

What I Did At The Crop - Part 3 of 3

And last, but certainly not least...
Falling into the "better late than never" category...

I finished my JYC/December Daily album!

When I went to the crop, I had only the Manifesto and Days 1 through 3 finished and printed:

These pages are digital except for the cardstock backing and the "celebrate" sticker on Jay's birthday page.  I had created the template myself, trying to imitate Ali's 2010 December Daily templates, but was very frustrated because my outlines just wouldn't do what I wanted them to! And at some point Ali's templates went on sale, so I went ahead and bought them.


That was as far as I had gotten by mid-January.  I had lots of photos and ideas, but no more pages! I wasn't even sure I was going to finish the album at all. 

At the crop, I did all the digital work for December 4th through the 24th, but had to wait until I got home to print and assemble the pages:

These pages became true hybrid.  At the crop I resized each of Ali's templates (they are 6x8) to 5.5x8.5 to fit my album, then edited, cropped, and fit my photos and journaling into the templates.

My pages included a mix of the JYC prompts, Picture the Holidays prompts, and some of the stories I had written for Sian's Christmas Club.

In most cases I used Ali's daily dated templates.  And finished it off at home after the crop by adding a scrap of patterned paper, a title with sticker letters, rub-ons, or handwritten, and coloring in the date with markers.

 But in a few instances I used the photo templates, like this full page one of the Amaryllis bloom.

And this page with photos from our Christmas in Hawaii.



My favorite pages ended up being these two - where I highlighted the new Christmas song by Train, and showcased the beautiful card I got from Jacky!

I did manage to add a little bit of emphemera - but certainly not what I had in mind when I first thought of trying on Ali's style!

Love the Thickers letters and the Fancy Pants papers and rub-ons!



I found I ended up with a lot of pages with no journaling at all.  I really feel like I had fully answered the JYC prompts in my two prior albums and just didn't have anything new to say!

I had to create my page for the 25th at home because I hadn't even downloaded those photos to my computer yet!  And having finished this, I decided to end my album with the 25th and call it good!

To finish it off, I borrowed an idea from Karen and created a disclaimer page that covers the fact that I've skipped days and used so many different formats to create these pages.  But hey, I found a way to use one of the transparency overlays I had set aside for this project!

And a title page with some photos I had not used in the album.  These last two, created on January 31st. 

And with that, I'm calling it done!  Thus making good on my goal of finishing this album by the end of January!

I have plenty of room in this album still, so I plan to include next year's JYC in this album in the same size. 

But I've learned that Ali's style of hybrid doesn't work for me for a month long daily project.  I don't have the time or the patience to pull it all together the way she does!  I adore her style, but it just is not for me!

Next year's album will probably be all digital, without templates, just creating a 5.5 x 8.5 digital page a day.  And I'm going to have to figure out what pages I want to create before the month starts.  I may concentrate more on Shimelle's photo prompts, most of which I didn't even get to last year!

A Little Christmas Spirit

Today I woke up needing a few certain songs to get me going. So I'm feeling mighty grateful for YouTube for giving me the pick-me-up I needed!

My favorite Christmas tune in the "oldies" category is "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and has been for years. But it has to be the Bing Crosby version. That's the one I grew up with and I still love it!



Of more recent vintage, "Where Are You Christmas" by Faith Hill (used in the Jim Carey version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas") has been my favorite for several years. Love the message. It can always pull me from feeling like Scrooge to really embracing the Christmas Spirit!


And brand new this year... "Shake Up Christmas" by Train. Love the lyrics. Love the video - it's so stinkin' cute! No way you can listen to this one and not end up feeling happy!


Hope you caught a little of my Christmas spirit!

Seven Days

I have so much going on lately that I'm not even sure where to begin! Has it really been SEVEN DAYS since I last blogged?! Did you miss me???

Here's SEVEN things I've been doing in the past week:
1. Thanksgiving:

Seems my whole family was starved to death, so once dinner went on the table, everyone was ready to eat. No time for great photos.  But since I usually get NO food photos at all, I was happy to have just one turn out well enough to publish! And this is it. One single photo of Thanksgiving.

2. Black Friday:

Started off with 4 a.m. shopping at Target.  I went in, grabbed the single item I was there for, paid and left.  And while I got what I went for, I'm  hoping to not repeat that experience next year. It was insane!  I was home by 4:45 and did the bulk of my Christmas shopping online with Black Friday specials, finished by 5:30 a.m. and managed to spend some seriously big dollars in less than an hour.  Definitely doing my part for the economy!

Tales from the scale - I weighed in a half pound up from the prior week. Given the large slice of apple pie and ice cream, I'm not surprised! But I lost it by Monday and am back on track.

Body Wars - Improvement! At Physical Therapy, measurements showed that my flexibility and range of motion are definitely better.  Several inches closer to being able to touch finger tips to the floor! I've been officially discharged for knee issues and am now treating for just my back, with increased exercises. Public service announcement:  Have YOU stretched today???

3. Happy Birthday to My Guy:

Saturday we celebrated Jay's birthday (even though his birthday is actually today).  We did this early because Sarah (on the left) was headed back to College on Sunday.  Having a birthday in December wreaks havoc with shopping budgets.  Me? I combined birthday and Christmas, along with next Valentine's Day, Father's Day, Anniversary and any other gift-giving occasion that might arise and ordered my guy an Apple Macbook Pro. To his precise specifications.  He is The Computer Geek after all.  I'll be paying for it for a year. Literally. I got the twelve month financing option!

4. Blogging for Bliss Round Robin - The book is packaged up, postage paid, and will be dropped in the mail tomorrow morning on my way to work.  Participants will go in the following order:  First Bliss will go cross country to California to visit Sandy.  Then it'll do a quick tour of the U.S. via Melissa and Rachel.  A short border hop will take Bliss over to Lee in Canada.  From there it'll fly across an ocean to visit Jacky, Cheryl, and Mel in the U.K. Another ocean crossing will take Bliss over to Amy in Australia, before making its way back home.

   5. And speaking of blogs... last week (while I was MIA) Melissa was kind enough to award me the "Stylish Blogger" Award.  Thanks so much Melissa!  Since this post is already ridiculously long and you'll learn eight things about me reading it, let's just say I pass the award on to the eight lovely ladies linked to in the Blogging for Bliss paragraph above? You all deserve it! And if you want to play along properly, you can read the rules on Melissa's blog here.

6. Journal Your Christmas/December Daily/Picture the Holidays.
Seriously - is it December ALREADY?  I'm still in a dither about the way this year's album will be constructed. I have a 5.5 x 8.5 three ring binder with page protectors. I know I am combining thoughts/ideas/prompts from all three venues. But digital, paper or hybrid? What color scheme? Any unifying elements? I have no clue!  I do know that I ADORED Shimelle's Christmas Manifesto.  Here's what I did with it:

First I recolored the green background to more closely match the color of my album.  I added papers and elements from The Studio Girls "Impressions of Festivities" kit from Scrapbookgraphics.  If you are into digital, this is a huge kit for only $7.99. I've linked to it if you want to check it out.  I agree with every statement in the Manifesto, so I didn't feel the need to reinvent at all! I have printed the Manifesto in 8.5 x 11 for my bulletin board (where I will see it every day) and in 5.5 x 8.5 for my album.  Love it!

7. Reverb10:


Today as I was browsing through my Google Reader, this kept popping up.  First I saw it on Ali Edward's blog. She learned about it from a twitter by Tracey Clark, teacher extraordinaire of Picture the Holidays  over at Big Picture Classes. Then Sally G. posted about it.  These are all women that I greatly admire and I trust them when they say this is going to be good! So I hopped over to the web site and signed myself up. But it didn't end there. Shortly after I signed up, I saw posts from Susannah Conway and Lee Currie who are also playing along! I feel I am in great company and this should be a wonderful journey and fit in nicely with JYC and Picture the Holidays as well!

Today's prompt is:

December 1 One Word.

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?  (Author: Gwen Bell)

My "One Little Word" for 2010 was "Wholehearted".  I embraced living wholeheartedly in many ways, jumping into photography, a self-exploration journey, and fitness with my whole heart. I read books by Brene Brown and Gretchen Rubin and more, participated in the Unravelling courses with Susannah Conway and more online classes and challenges than I can count, and joined My Fitness Pal and began to seriously address my health issues. I deepened relationships with online friends, and concentrated on being more "present" in the moment at home.

I feel like it has been a banner year in terms of personal growth.  But if I have to sum up all of 2010 in a single word... it has to be GRATITUDE. Because everything I did throughout 2010 just made me realize how Grateful I am for my family, my friends, my world.  Funny I should come to that word when it also happens to be today's prompt for Picture the Holidays!  So here's me, totally grateful for 2010.

Looking forward to 2011, I haven't fully crystallized the picture of what I want to manifest next year. It definitely involves more FOCUS (but Fit and Fab and Fantastic are also good "F" words, all of which I'd like to be manifesting in 2011).  Focus means limiting the classes I take so I can fully engage in each one (which will be ridiculously difficult for me).  Focus means continuing to work on and improve my photography and Photoshop skills. Focus means single-tasking and finishing projects that I start.  And that's a good beginning to manifesting what I want for 2011. But it needs polishing, more thought, more... well... focus.

Christmas Card Layout

Apologies for the terrible quality of this photo, but here is my 2009 holiday card page.  Every year I have saved cards and scrapped them, but it usually runs 3 or 4 pages because I was saving the whole card.  I totally scraplifted this idea from Ali Edwards
and ended up with a single 12x12 page of holiday cards received this year - I love it!

This also qualifies as an asymmetrical layout for my DYL class, which means I finally finished ONE assignment (and we are about to begin week 3 - yikes!).  I'd be concerned that I was already messing up on my intention to participate fully in all my classes this year, but I intend to catch up and rectify this issue at the Winter Getaway crop this weekend.  Can't wait!

P.S. I know the lines are off because I cut the top right picture wrong, and I couldn't cut the bottom right picture to size without losing heads, but I'm embracing the imperfection - I've decided the layout is just fine this way, even if it isn't perfect.

My Christmas Journal - a little inspiration

On Friday, Scrap Big blog posted a quote from Dr. Suess' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".  And I felt immediate inspiration.  As I've said, my Christmas Journal may have days where the entry is a quote and this quote spoke to me.  So I put together this page in Photoshop Elements:

Paper is from LivE's "Winter Breeze" kit at Jessica Sprague.com.  Image of the Grinch was borrowed from Google Images. And for once I have a page done same day!  Okay, not a page about my Christmas tree, but honestly, it isn't fully decorated yet anyway.

Where Are You Christmas?

Every year around this time (post Halloween, pre Thanksgiving), I begin to struggle with finding and maintaining my Christmas Spirit. I really relate to the words of this song from the movie “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”:

Inevitably, once I start focusing, I find my Christmas spirit. It really is just a matter of digging myself out from under the commercialism and thinking about what the season means to me and how I want to honor it. Last year I did two things that have made a HUGE difference in how I approach this season.

1. I made a conscious decision to TAKE BACK my Christmas. I used to be so stressed out with plans and preparations that I didn’t get to enjoy the holiday. Through a class at BPS called “Cut the Crazy Out of Christmas” I created a 3 ring binder Christmas Planner. It includes great forms for organizing and planning every aspect of your Christmas holiday. The Planner is reusable by simply printing out new forms each year. You can find similar forms and ideas here.

2. I combined ideas from Shimelle – Journal Your Christmas and Ali Edwards – December Daily to create a daily journal of the month of December that allowed me to be fully present in each moment and each tradition throughout the holiday season. I LOVE my Christmas Journal from last year and am doing the same thing this year.

I have one major new goal for this Christmas. I want to AVOID EXCESS. Christmas in the past few years with my three teenage daughters has felt like a lot of excess with little appreciation - they just EXPECT huge amounts of stuff. I want to buy less and not feel guilty about it. And I’d like to make the gifts more meaningful. Now to figure out how.... I could use some help on this one - Any ideas on how to sell less gifts to three teenagers??